The present invention relates generally to expandable rooms for habitable accommodations in static structures and vehicles. More particularly, this invention relates to room structures that are telescopically slidable between retracted and expanded positions and which provide plumbing fixtures, such as kitchen sinks, in those rooms.
Various motorized and towable vehicles are known which have rooms or portions thereof that can be adjusted between expanded and retracted positions in order to provide more or less internal accommodation, respectively, as desired by the user. In a typical structure, one portion of the room is movable and telescopically received or nested within a portion of the room that remains fixed. Similar structures can be used effectively in buildings, although for convenience the discussion below focusses primarily on the vehicular examples.
When the vehicle, a Class A motor home for example, is in motion, the room typically remains in a retracted position. As such, there is adequate space within the room to accommodate users in transit and remain within the standard width limitations imposed upon motor vehicles. When the motor home is stopped for a length of time, however, it is often desirable to increase the size of internal accommodations. At that point users can slide the nested room portion out to its fully expanded position. An example of such rooms is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,491,933.
Previously, expandable rooms have been used for living rooms and the like where furniture is displaced in the expansion of the room. However, difficulties can be encountered when the expandable portion of the room incorporates plumbing fixtures, such as a kitchen sink, due to the impact of room expansion upon the plumbing. Traditionally, plumbing to supply hot and cold water in to a sink and remove waste fluid out from the sink has been provided by rigid pipes fixedly connected together and mounted behind walls. When walls and/or floors move relative to each other, as in an expandable room, such prior arrangements cannot be maintained.
The fluid inlet lines for hot and cold water and fluid outlet lines for waste water are typically fixed with respect to the vehicle. It has been suggested to employ flexible hoses coupled between those fixed lines. However, such arrangements have been found to have at least drainage difficulty because the flexible lines may not maintain a downward or negative slope from the sink to the drain over the entire length of the lines when the sink is moved between positions. As a result, fluid may become trapped within the flexible lines, leading to an unsanitary environment. Also, flexible lines have a greater tendency to bind and/or leak over time, especially as a result of the stresses imposed by repeated sink movement and vehicular vibration. Where such plumbing is placed behind the wall in a vehicle, detection, maintenance and repair to overcome these deficiencies becomes more difficult. On the other hand, if such plumbing is exposed within the vehicle, it becomes unsightly, permits leakage to contact living spaces and furniture and can present an unwanted or hazardous obstruction to user traffic within the vehicle. Moreover, any such plumbing arrangement within a vehicle must withstand the vibrational stresses imposed by vehicular motion without loss of sealing integrity and should consume a minimum of vehicular interior space.
Accordingly, it is an object of this invention to provide an improved plumbing assembly particularly suited for use with expandable room structures. Further objects include the provision of a plumbing assembly for expandable rooms that:
A. is reliable over long periods of time in a vehicular environment; PA1 B. maintains proper fluid flow regardless of room position; PA1 C. is inexpensive to manufacture and assemble; and PA1 D. is compact and requires a minimum of space in behind the wall construction.
These and other objects of the present invention are obtained through the provision of a plumbing assembly formed from a plurality of rigid pipe sections, connected between a movable sink and a relatively fixed fluid outlet, which are joined together by swivel fittings that permit the pipe sections to rotate with respect to each other. In this manner, different distances between the sink and the fluid outlet are accommodated by a folding and unfolding motion of the plumbing assembly in a minimum of space behind the wall of an expandable portion of the room. Fluid supply lines for providing hot and cold water to the sink faucet can be mounted within the same spacial area by means of similar swivel fittings that create an offset parallelogram structure. The lengths of at least the fluid draining pipe sections and the supporting structure behind the wall are selected such that a downward slope is maintained over the entire fluid flow path between the sink and the fluid outlet regardless of sink position during usage.